ATLAS: TEAM NEWS & NOTES

Who doesn't love a bunch of esoteric math problems? The team's first symmetry measurements.

It has been the "math" behind our athlete's study of aesthetics and symmetry fore over a decade: "phi," the irrational number 1.618… that represents a proportionality found in nature (otherwise known as "golden ratio" or "golden proportion"). It is an ancient formula for understanding how the eye perceives mathematics in proportions in the same way as the ear can "hear math" in musical beats. That ability to see math is tied intimately with our happiness-triggers in the mind, and humans "like" when they see the proportions that our mind has programmed.

And who doesn't love staring at Coach XN's mad scribbles on a Sunday morning, am I right?

This is the foundation of all bodybuilding posing. Bodybuilding poses come from ancient forms designed in these proportions and carried through millennia of artistry. As they re-emerged in the sport, the artistic variations on those forms gradually evolved the mandatory poses used in competitive bodybuilding. Thus, knowing the math behind the foundations of these poses helps inform an athlete how to hold himself in a form that the eye "likes"; the same forms from the provenance of bodybuilding.

"Of course they get the Asian guy on the team do the math." -Steven lee

But while it seems like we're all cutting-edge for using it, it is actually math that has been around for thousands of years. It is both informative for understanding one's proportions as well as a useful foundation for learning posing presentation. if you know how tour "math" is off, you get a more intuitive sense of how to present more appealing poses.

While there are many understood formulas to body proportions (most famous being DaVinci's Vitruvian man measurements), the team mainly looked at the biggest idea of physique proportions: the golden mean. They calculated their rough "phi" using some light math and bait of human error.

Yet another Next Level team getting the edge in the sport of bodybuilding by delving deeper than just training and diet. A better result starts with a higher standard. And these guys are setting that standard early.

"Phi 1": the whole body's proportions relative the the endpoints of the arm cut-off. (Sam has the most "mathematically proportioned" body of the team, as compared to phi = 1.618…)

"Phi 2": the torso from head to tip of fingers, with the "phi-point" being the armpit. (Ali has the most "mathematically proportioned" upper body of the team, as compared to phi = 1.618…)